Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a studio’s debut RPG that exceeds all expectations

When I hit credits on Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, I was left with the feeling that it was a role-playing game that’s like a lot of games that came before it — your Elden Ring, Final Fantasy, and more interestingly, Nier Replicant — and yet, not a lot of games are quite like it. Sure, it had an all-star voice cast, dynamic turn-based combat, a haunting score, a distinctive art style, and creature design that felt like waltzing through the Louvre on mushrooms — all hallmarks of pantheon-worthy RPGs. But as someone who lives for motifs, I found myself captivated by its mythic grandeur, the layered depth of its world-building, and its visceral themes. For me, games ascend from entertaining romps to pantheon-worthy experiences when they craft narratives that linger on the edges of my daydreams. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 had me reflexively lean forward in my chair when it was first announced at the Xbox Games Showcase in June 2024, and it’s still got me thinking about it after completing it. 

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the debut title from independent French studio Sandfall Interactive, paints a picture of a chilling dystopia where humanity’s fate has been dictated by a ritual steeped in inevitability. Each year, a deity known as the Paintress approaches a towering monolith that dominates the horizon, inscribing a steadily descending number — a countdown now reaching 33. Turns out this number corresponds to a person’s age, and for those who have reached the marked age on the sequestered island of Lumière, a phenomenon known as “Gommage” — a poetic erasure where they dissolve into smoke and flower petals — marks their end.

As survivors navigate their bleak reality, the Gommage has become more than just a cruel inevitability — it’s treated like a bittersweet tradition. Phrases like “We’re already dead, just catching up” roll off tongues with the ease of a casual greeting. Some condemn those who refuse to bring children into a world marked by orphanhood and premature loss. Others, facing the shadow of their looming expiration or clinging to the fragile thread of hope, adopt a rallying cry: “When one falls, we continue.” Those who subscribe to this mindset choose to enlist in  a revolving door of folks known as expeditioners who embark on treacherous annual missions to confront the Paintress. None of these expeditions has yet succeeded in defeating her, of course.

Optimism is a hard commodity for the expeditioners to find. Most of them no longer fight for victory; they have acquiesced to expecting to die, uncovering as much information as they can about the Paintress to assist the next generation in stopping their slow culling. The story follows the 33rd expedition — a team whose average age elicits little optimism from the townsfolk of Lumière. Already resigned to failure, the people place their hopes not in victory but in the expedition itself, with its goal to leave behind insights for those who will inevitably try again. Yet, the members of the 33rd expedition march onward, determined to end humanity’s Sisyphean struggle once and for all. 

Few games have captivated my art-hoe eye quite like Clair Obscur. By far, the most striking thing about it is its enrapturing mix of Belle Époque character designs, art deco and high fantasy environmental design, and avant-garde creature designs, which Clair Obscur accentuates in a bold, innovative third-person overworld traversal system where its party looks like Warhammer miniatures walking through a living, breathing diorama. On their way to the Paintress, they’ll run up against Nevrons, hostile eldritch creatures who’ve unceremoniously ended past expeditions. Elsewhere, less hostile creatures set in Clair Obscur’s dreamlike world are ambivalent to humans’ struggle. To them, you’re just the latest in an annual trail of expeditioners that come through. Still, I found myself taking the scenic route to the expedition’s otherwise time-sensitive quest, taking in the sights and trying to parse how the nonhuman cultures work. The game’s design also cleverly nudges you off the beaten path. For explorers like me who instinctively 180 away from areas that don’t look like progress, even bumping into walls as though a path will magically manifest itself on impact, taking an off-route approach is richly and habitually rewarded. I not only uncovered trinkets that boosted my team’s combat stats, but I also discovered journals from past expeditions that contained nuggets of advice for the trickiest areas and boss fights. 

Even when most expeditions aren’t entirely helpful in sussing out solutions to enemy weaknesses, I found the game’s emphasis on learning from those who came before and leaving a legacy for those who follow to be one of its most poignant elements. Their off-the-cuff diary-style journals resonate like haikus from Zen monks on the verge of death. While in practice, these moments functioned similarly to codexes scattered across countless other games, their thematic resonance elevated them to something profoundly moving. 

These final words, accompanied by voice-over — usually also puppy-guarded by strong enemies towering over their statuesque corpses — shook me every time I ventured away from the non-story progression paths in Clair Obscur’s picturesque dystopian world. Some of these final-hour confessionals came from haughty big-game hunters who prioritized chasing their latest conquest over passing on knowledge to the next generation before meeting their literal deadline. Others were resigned to their fate as a research run aimed to help the next generation overcome their past failures, like a helicopter parent scribbling every fleeting thought on a notepad on their child’s lunchbox. Still, all of the 60-plus journals littered about Clair Obscur’s avant-garde vistas fueled me to defy destiny by beefing Expedition 33’s stats to be strong enough to kill god twice over. 

Like any self-respecting turn-based RPG, Clair Obscur comes kitted out with a robust combat system and an overabundance of skills, attributes, and updates that turn its dynamic real-time dodge and parry mechanics into a chess match with demigods as my pieces. Each combat encounter in Clair Obscur isn’t your ordinary turn-based exchange of blows. Instead, it fuses real-time action with traditional strategy — you dodge and parry incoming strikes while unleashing powerful QTEs to amp up your attacks. But the risk is real. I learned that lesson quickly when a giant “risky” fireball, intended to take down three foes, ended up exploding in my face and leaving me crumpled in a miserable heap.

The sheer variety of powers earned from taking on challenging optional bosses loitering in arm’s reach of main quests™ had me feeling like I was orchestrating the starting five of a basketball dynasty in Expedition 33. I never felt like I was restricted to one de facto style of playing and instead felt encouraged to push myself to defeat optional bosses, not to farm experience points but to see what kind of skills they’d drop to make me go back to the lab and concoct more strategies to play upon a new game plus revisit.

One of the most mesmerizing aspects of Clair Obscur‘s synergy-centric turn-based combat was the countless hours I spent tinkering in the menus, devising strategies with the precision of a world-class chess master. By combining Pictos (the in-game name for character abilities), unique attributes, and Luminas (passive Picto abilities you can equip on any other character, regardless of who has the original Pictos equipped), I felt like I was uncovering an equation that would make god meet a permanent end.

Around 20 hours into my 31-hour odyssey to the game’s credits (with plenty of side content and bosses still left unexplored), I engineered my core trio: Sciel, the shredded, scythe-wielding Yu-Gi-Oh-esque duelist flinging stat-stacking cards; Lune, my Avatar-esque, barefoot-gliding, smartypants mage; and Monoco, the fuzzy, wise, Chewbacca-esque brawler with power-stealing Naruto-style moves. Their interlocking skills and attributes meshed into an ouroboros loop, effectively turning them into my very own Iron Curtain. 

Even the way they’d saunter onto the battlefield, rolling their shoulders and cocking their heads to the side, has the aura of Michael Jordan about to make a miracle happen in game six of the 1998 NBA Finals. Meanwhile, during my spontaneous retooling sessions of the characters’ abilities — both early and late in the game — I found myself sifting through three towering columns of my eclectic mix of Pictos and Luminas. It was nearly overwhelming. Despite my victories, I felt like I was trying to capture the entire spectrum and intricate details of a vibrant tapestry, armed only with the limited vision cones of a dog. 

Clair Obscur’s engaging combat and story outweighed the niggling issues I had with the game, but here they are nonetheless. As beautiful as it is, the game does not have a photo mode, meaning the pause menu always overtakes the middle and sides of the screen, covering up picturesque photo ops like Lumiere’s twisted Eiffel Tower, which reminded me of French photographer Robert Doisneau’s Distorsion Optique. The occasional stints of platforming in the game are also finicky as hell. However, these were minor gripes in my overall pleasant experience with Clair Obscur, which was firing on all cylinders with its kinetic combat and out-there story. 

Despite Clair Obscur‘s painfully French premise and themes, it doesn’t wallow in the existential dread and misery of its admittedly bleak journey, nor is it pretentiously navel-gazing. During camp downtime, you can just kick back and chat with your party members — and even spark a romance with one of them. These characters aren’t your typical RPG archetypes; they feel genuinely human, flawed, and full of hope, with a charm that makes you invest every bit of your thinking power into ensuring they finish their story with a happy ending. It’s clear that the cast, featuring talents like Daredevil’s Charlie Cox, Baldur’s Gate 3’s Jennifer English, and Final Fantasy 16’s Ben Starr, is entirely in their element. They deliver an emotional gravitas that captures their characters’ vulnerabilities on perilous missions, all while exhibiting an infectious chemistry with one another. They swap jokes around campfires and even bicker during quests, infusing the game with warmth as these seemingly doomed heroes fight to overcome the oddities of its lavish, nightmarish world.

Endings aren’t just what stick with people the most in RPGs; they’re also what can make or break them. Unfortunately, I felt like the game had lost the plot entirely in its initial march toward its finale. Clair Obscur‘s final act came across as somewhat fragmented, as if a high-concept narrative from a wholly different story had been stitched onto what was otherwise a strong premise. Despite its awkward and clunky nature, the late-stage twist did manage to find its footing through the engaging introduction of a new, conflicting theme and a last-minute revelation that, while loosely connected, echoed elements from the story’s earlier foundation. Ultimately, much of the narrative’s weight was carried by the voice acting, which helped soften the inconsistencies of the game’s final act. The twist felt like an extravagant writing flex — one that indulged in its ambition, trying to have its cake and eat it too, leaving me thoroughly lost in the sauce until the game’s closing moments managed to pull things back together.

As the debut game from Sandfall Interactive, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is far from a fleeting experience. It’s a robust reminder of what happens when a creative group of people take what was once a solo passion project and transform it into something more — a game in which innovative combat meets a unique, original story that dares to challenge and inspire, even when all hope seems lost. 

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 will be released April 24 on PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X. The game was reviewed on PlayStation 5 using a prerelease download code provided by Kepler Interactive. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.